Three Kyries: Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Part 2 of 4.

On March 30, 2014, the Chancel Choir of Atlanta's Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church presented side-by-side performances of three lesser-known but superb Kyrie settings, by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Dr. Steven Darsey, Director of Music, invited me to present a brief commentary preceding each setting, and then a brief, more general comparison of the three composers. This four-part entry is a reworking of those commentaries. My sincerest thanks to Dr. Darsey for his invitation and to the Chancel Choir and accompanying instrumentalists for their compelling performances on that evening.

Mozart: Kyrie in D-minor, K341 (1781)

Mozart composed his Kyrie in D-minor forty-two years after Bach composed his in G-minor. Like Bach's Kyrie, Mozart's is in three sections. Unlike Bach, Mozart marks the transitions from one section to the next with clear cadences, that is, definitive harmonic events in which music settles into a home key. This is typical of the "Classical" style of composition, in which Mozart excelled.

Here is one page from Mozart's score:

At a glance we see lots of notes, but also significant portions of clear space. We can literally see in the score something of the transparency of Mozart's music. Mozart is never turbid, never dense.

As the chorus sings "Kyrie eleison" in broad phrases, the instruments do not imitate or elaborate in the style of Bach. Rather the instruments embellish and adorn.

In the first three measures of this page, for example, the violins embellish with a running pattern, and in the final four measures with a skippy pattern in wide intervals. The clarinets sing a smooth, sustained duet. The oboes and bassoons play a perky rhythmic motif—oboes in an upward direction, bassoons in a downward. Meanwhile, flutes and horns sustain a single note in octaves.

We might expect such instrumental illuminations to compete with or distract from the choral presentation of the text. In fact they vitalize Mozart's presentation, without diluting the music's devotional tone.

I hear Mozart's Kyrie as a devout offering to God. This is not always the atmosphere associated with Mozart's settings of the Mass (he composed almost twenty of them). Some of the earlier settings sound more decorative than devout. But in this Kyrie I hear solemn devotion. Throughout the opening twenty measures, and again in the twelve concluding measures, I hear a repeating pattern of reverencing bows, in both the strings and the chorus, expressive of veneration, obeisance, worship.

Mozart frequently attended Mass, and sometimes Confession. A friend reported Mozart's description of Catholic liturgy as a "mystical sanctuary" for an "uplifted heart."¹ Letters to his father disclose what seem to me genuine religious convictions. He writes of being calmed, consoled, and uplifted by prayer.² For the blessings of life, he writes, "I thank my Creator every day."³

On the occasion of his mother's death he writes:

God is ever before my eyes. I realize His omnipotence and I fear His anger; but I also recognize His love, His compassion and His tenderness towards His creatures. He will never forsake His own. If it is according to His will, so let it be according to mine.⁴

Mozart composes his Kyrie in the somber hues of minor. Yet about a minute into the first section, Kyrie eleison, he introduces the brighter hues of major. Then in the midst of the second section, Christe eleison, he returns to minor.

I think that Mozart positions his major and minor for a theological reason. In Christian theology, Christ's appearing is a source of hope. In the opening of the Mass, Kyrie, Lord, is distant, unapproachable, intimidating, and minor tonality seems appropriate. In the second section, Christe, Christ, is human, accessible, compassionate, and major tonality seems right.

But while this minor/major pattern is frequent in musical settings of the Kyrie during the Baroque and Classical periods, it is too simple for Mozart. In Catholic faith, Christ is both human and divine. Perhaps this is why Mozart uses both minor and major in the Kyrie section, and both major and minor in the Christe section.

Could this also be why in section two and on into section three Mozart freely interchanges the two texts, Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison? In Catholic faith, Christos is Kyrios, Christ is Lord.

I find myself comparing Mozart's Kyrie, with its transparency and harmonic colorations, to a cathedral window. The chorus presents the window's subject: humankind's plea for mercy. Harmonic modulations are the window's hues.

The embellishing instrumental lines are the window's tracery, that is, the ornamental stonework that frames a window. A window's tracery can at first escape our notice. But as we look carefully, tracery reveals its own beauty—not competing with its window, but presenting it with modesty and grace.

So, I feel, Mozart offers his Kyrie to God.

Listening

One might especially listen for (a) the reverencing gestures of violins and chorus in the opening twenty measures, and again in the closing twelve measures; (b) Mozart's ever-elegant shifts from minor to major and major to minor; and (c) adorning "tracery" in the orchestra's inner voices.

Recordings of the Mozart Kyrie are available free at Spotify.com for any who sign up. I particularly enjoy The Monteverdi Choir's performance. Click on Browse, and type in the Search box  "Mozart, Kyrie in D minor, K.341, Monteverdi Choir"; then click on Show All Results. (Don't confuse the K341 Kyrie with the K626 Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem Mass.) 
           

(Continued in Part 3 of this 4-part posting)

                       

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1. See Hans Küng, Mozart: Traces of Transcendence (William B. Eerdmans, 1993), pp.24–5.
2. Robert Spaethling, Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life (W. W. Norton, 2000), p.159; see also p.175.
3. Ibid., p.389.
4. Emily Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3rd ed. (W. W. Norton, 1985), p.341.

*****

Three Kyries: Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Part 1 of 4.

On March 30, 2014, the Chancel Choir of Atlanta's Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church presented side-by-side performances of three lesser known but superb Kyrie settings, by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Dr. Steven Darsey, Director of Music, invited me to present a brief commentary preceding each setting, and then a brief, more general comparison of the three composers. This four-part entry is a reworking of those commentaries. My sincerest thanks to Dr. Darsey for his invitation and to the Chancel Choir and accompanying instrumentalists for their compelling performances on that evening.

Bach: Kyrie from Mass in G-minor, BWV235 (1738–39)

Each of the Kyries we shall consider in this multiple-entry posting is composed in three sections. This is determined in part by musical convention, but also by the threefold text: Kyrie eleison / Christe eleison / Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy / Christ have mercy / Lord have mercy.

This Kyrie is from Bach's Mass in G-minor, one of his four "short masses" composed in 1738–39. In it Bach reuses music he had originally composed in 1726 for the opening movement of his Cantata 102.

Here is one page from the Kyrie's score—actually, two pages published one above the other on a single sheet:

At a glance we see lots and lots of notes and almost no clear spaces. Bach often wrote music in this densely concentrated style. This is a characteristic principle of much music from the "Baroque" period, of which Bach was the supreme master. Scholars call it the principle of "elaboration," that is, the practice of filling every nook and cranny with melodic invention, variation, interaction, and imitation.

Bach opens both the second and third sections of his Kyrie with a fugue, that is, a melody strictly imitated by successive voices or instruments. In the first measure of the above pages of the score we see the beginning of one of those fugue melodies—a dotted rhythm followed by an upward leap of an octave—in 1st oboe, 1st violin, and the sopranos of the chorus. The melody recommences in the first measure of the lower page (1st oboes and 1st violins), and again in the next-to-last measure on the sheet (sopranos).

All the other musical lines on these pages are independent yet thoroughly interrelated melodies, and each and every one of these melodies is its own thing of beauty. One of the names given to this wondrous melodic interweaving is counterpoint.

I find myself thinking of this Kyrie, with its dense counterpoint and rich harmonic hues, as a profuse musical tapestry. Bach's fundamental harmonies are like warp threads. They provide a strong basic structure. And as a tapestry's warp threads are usually deeply embedded, not on prominent display, so too with Bach's harmonies.

For example, in the fourth measure of the excerpt above Bach comes home to his Kyrie's basic tonality of G-minor (see the lowest note of the Continuo part). But this return is not a harmonic event, not a musical cadence. Rather, it is an inconspicuous harmonic moment: Bach simply touches base with his home key and keeps on running.

Some listeners are skilled enough to keep track of Bach's harmonic modulations in a piece like this. I am not. After a few measures Bach leaves me behind in a state of wonderment. But never for a moment do I doubt that Herr Bach knows exactly where he is harmonically, and exactly where he is going.

Upon his sturdy harmonic warp Bach weaves his elaborate weft of melodies, displaying intricate patternings and subtle harmonic colorations.

Bach was a man of profound Lutheran faith. He considered music his divine calling, with counterpoint as a basic language of worship. Not merely counterpoint as elaboration; not merely as maximum elaboration. Bach strove for complete and perfect elaboration.

Upon first hearing Bach's counterpoint, Johann von Goethe wrote:

It is as if the eternal harmony were conversing with itself, as it may have done, in the bosom of God, just before the Creation of the world.¹

Remarkably, Martin Luther himself—exactly two centuries earlier—endorsed musical counterpoint as a worthy offering in praise of God:

When learning...develops and refines...natural music, then at last it is possible to taste with wonder (yet not to comprehend) God's absolute and perfect wisdom in his wondrous work of music. Here it is most remarkable that one single voice continues to sing the tenor [the melody], while at the same time many other voices play around it, exulting and adorning it in exuberant strains and, as it were, leading it forth in a divine roundelay....²

That is Luther speaking of the comparatively simple counterpoint of 1538. What, we have to wonder, might Luther have thought of Bach's divine roundelays!

In this Kyrie, I feel, Bach offers God his most costly gift: a musical tapestry of complete and perfect counterpoint. It is an offering of gratitude: Bach's gratitude for God's mercy bestowed through Christ, and Bach's gratitude for his own God-given genius. Thus he wrote at the end of manuscripts: Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory."

Listening

One might especially listen for (a) the marvelous opening twenty measures of counterpoint where the instruments play alone, then for how the chorus joins in and the counterpoint grows more and more elaborate; (b) Bach's two different fugue melodies that open section two and section three; and (c) how in the Kyrie's final twenty measures the oboes repeat exactly their opening twenty measures, which Bach meshes effortlessly with the myriad melodic motifs he has introduced in between.

Recordings of the Bach Kyrie are available free at Spotify.com for anyone who signs up. I particularly enjoy the Purcell Quartet's performance: click on Browse and type in the Search box "bach, kyrie, mass in g-minor, purcell quartet;" then click on Show All Results.

(Continued in Part 2 of this 4-part posting) 

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1. Arthur Duke Coleridge, ed., Goethe's Letters to Zelter (BiblioLife, 2009), p.293.

2. Luther's Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann (Fortress Press, 1965), Vol 53, Liturgy and Hymns, "Preface to Georg Rhau's Symphoniae iucunde, 1538," tr. Ulrich S. Leupold, p.324.

*****

Jesus's Prayers and Christian Praying

Christ Blessing the Children, Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553)

Why do so many of my fellow Christian citizens insist on praying in public settings? No simple answer can suffice, of course. But one reason, I believe, is that many Christians give far greater attention to the Gospel of John than to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus prays frequently but almost always privately, and he distinctly instructs his followers to pray in private, not in public. Jesus also warns against lengthy prayers. Among Jesus's own prayers quoted by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the most extensive is 36 words in length (Lk 10:21, New Revised Standard Version).

In contrast, the Gospel of John makes no mention at all of Jesus's teachings about prayer, has Jesus praying publicly, and gives an account of Jesus declaiming one prayer that is 629 words in length (Jn 17:1-26, NRSV).

I believe that this contrast bears directly on the issue of public prayer in the United States.

The Synoptic Gospels

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the "Synoptic Gospels," because they "see together" or share a common orientation, whereas the orientation of John, the "Fourth Gospel," is fundamentally different.

With slightly varying details, the Synoptic Gospels report six prayers in which they quote Jesus's words:

The Synoptic Gospels describe many other instances of Jesus at prayer, but they do so without quoting any of his language. This implies what the Synoptics often state explicitly: that Jesus typically prayed alone.¹ 

Jesus is described as praying at crucial times in his ministry: at his baptism;² before choosing his apostles;³ in the midst of healing;⁴ before his transfiguration;⁵ before his death;⁶ and on the cross.⁷

In Jesus's day-to-day life the Synoptic Gospels often mention his offering blessings before eating,⁸ and they tell of Jesus praying over children as he blesses them.⁹

Jesus also frequently gives guidance about praying. Prayers should be humble, not self-righteous;¹⁰ should be forgiving, particularly of enemies;¹¹ should be trusting, not doubting;¹² should be persistent, without loss of heart.¹³

Jesus particularly commends the prayer "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"¹⁴ and he urges his disciples to pray for deliverance from trial and temptation.¹⁵ Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer to his disciples—at the disciples' request, according to Luke's account.¹⁶

Most to our point here, Jesus cautions that prayer should be private, not public:

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.... Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:1, 5–6)

And Jesus teaches that prayers should be brief, not elaborate:

"When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Mt 6:7–8)

We may note that in the Synoptic chart displayed above, the final four of Jesus's six prayers consist of but a single sentence each.

The Gospel of John

The Fourth Gospel contains none of the prayers of Jesus quoted or mentioned in the Synoptics. Nor does John contain a single teaching of Jesus concerning prayer. In fact the words "pray" and "prayer" never appear in John's Gospel.

Instead, John presents three prayers of Jesus, utterly different in tone and content from the Synoptic prayers. First:

"Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." (The story of the raising of Lazarus, John 11:41–42)

This is a public prayer, spoken for the purpose of influencing a crowd.

Second:

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine." (As Jesus is facing arrest, John 12:27–30)

Here again John reports a public prayer, spoken for the sake of a crowd.

The third prayer presented by John is the lengthy declamation mentioned in the introductory paragraphs above, known as the "high-priestly prayer" or Jesus's "farewell to his disciples" (John 17:1–26). This prayer is elaborately theological, and it is seventeen times longer than the most extensive of Jesus's prayers in the Synoptics.

Twice John mentions Jesus giving thanks before a meal.¹⁷ But one need not look in John for Jesus's prayerful blessing of children, or for Jesus's prayer for God to forgive his tormentors. In John the principal theme of Jesus's prayers is Jesus himself: 

"Father...glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you...." (John 17:1)

This is typical of what has been called the extravagant doting of John's Gospel.

Comparisons

In its article "Prayers of Jesus," The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia offers the opinion that the high-priestly prayer from John's Gospel "may be regarded as the sole example furnished by the evangelists of our Lord's method of prayer." This is simply incorrect.

We have seen that John presents only three prayers of Jesus and includes not a single teaching of Jesus concerning prayer. The Synoptic Gospels, in contrast, quote the words of six of Jesus's own prayers, make numerous references to Jesus's solitary "method of prayer," and include a dozen teachings of Jesus concerning prayer.

Most biblical scholars agree that the entirety of John's Gospel, including Jesus's prayers, is written in the author's own unique language. Even biblical translators sometimes find it impossible to tell where Jesus's language is supposed to end and John's language to resume.¹⁸

The scholarly consensus is that the Fourth Gospel expresses John's theological beliefs about Jesus far more abundantly than it yields possible insight concerning the Jesus of history.

Conclusion

One commentator has written that for Christians "it has to be a choice between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels." Yet this choice is not possible for many of my Christian friends, across all denominations, including the greater part of earnest Christian students I have known in recent years. The Gospel of John has so thoroughly dominated every aspect of their religious formation that they are virtually unaware of Jesus's method of praying as presented in the Synoptics.

From the Synoptic Gospels they characteristically know the Christmas stories, along with a few of Jesus's parables and the Lord's Prayer. But they do not know that one of Jesus's most trenchant parables warns against the dangers of pride and self-righteousness in prayer,¹⁹ or that the Lord's Prayer is immediately prefaced by Jesus's explicit warnings against lengthy and public praying.²⁰

To take John's Gospel alone as a model of Jesus's "method of prayer" is to think of prayer as public and elaborate. Many Christians I know are pressing for this method of praying as a cultural—indeed, legal—norm for our nation.

To take the Synoptic Gospels as offering a more likely representation of Jesus's method of praying, as I believe it is right to do, is to think of prayer as brief, not elaborate, and private, not public.

Prayer is in fact the only thing that Jesus ever advised his followers to keep in the closet:

"When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father...." (Mt 6:6, King James Version)

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1. Mt 14:23; Mk 1:35; Mk 6:46; Lk 5:16; Lk 6:12; Lk 9:18; Lk 11:1.

2. Lk 3:21–22.

3. Lk 6:12–13.
4. Mk 7:32-35.

5. Lk 9:28–29.

6. Mt 26:36–46; Mk 14:32–41; Lk 22:39–46.

7. Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34; Lk 23:34, 46.
8. Mt 14:19; Mt 15:36; Mt 26:26–27; Mk 6:41; Mk 8:6–7; Mk 14:22–23; Lk 9:16; Lk 22:17-19;
       Lk 24:30.
9. Mt 19:13–15 (see also Mk 10:13–16; Lk 18:15–17).
10. Lk 18:9–14.

11. Mt 5:43–48; Mk 11:25–26; Lk 6:27–28.
12. Mt 18:19; Mt 21:21–22; Mk 11:22–24.
13. Lk 11:5–13; 18:1–8.
14. Lk 18:13–14.
15. Mk 14:37–38; Lk 21:36; 22:40, 45–46.
16. Mt 6:9-13; Lk 11:1–4.
17. Jn 6:11, 23.
18. See the NRSV textual footnotes at John 3:15, 21, and 30.
19. Lk 18:9-14.
20. Mt 6:5–8.

*****